What the hell just happened?!?!

vonCrandall · 03-08-11, 06:06 PM

So here we are, quietly working out way through the Dover Straights in a pitch black thunderstorm.

So far we have managed to elude the sweeping patrols and have had to go down near the seafloor and run silent for a while as their paths came entirely too close to the boat. After one of these incidents, I stayed submerged and ran at slow speed for another 30 mins to make sure they weren't turning around on us.

I surface and run at standard for another 5 minutes when all of a sudden I have heavy flooding in the forward torpedo room with water running into the forward crew compartment. I send the Chief to go check it out as I race up the ladder to see what is going on topside as I think a crash dive would send us to the bottom due to the additional forward weight.

What do I find? Absolutely nothing. No contacts, nothing in visual range (which was maybe 15 feet anyways), sounding confirms 50m under the kiel so I know we didn't hit land. We get the flooding stopped and I order a dive to 30m for a sound check that tells me what I already knew in that the closest hydrophone contacts were over 10km away.

It's midnight and it's storming with heavy fog and 0 visibility (rules out planes), I was surfaced, I didn't hit land, nothing knew I was there let alone knew to attack me and I went from 100% to 30% hull integrity without as much as a warning.

Did I hit a friggen mine?

03-08-11, 06:06 PM	#1
vonCrandall Mate Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 57 Downloads: 94 Uploads: 0	What the hell just happened?!?! So here we are, quietly working out way through the Dover Straights in a pitch black thunderstorm. So far we have managed to elude the sweeping patrols and have had to go down near the seafloor and run silent for a while as their paths came entirely too close to the boat. After one of these incidents, I stayed submerged and ran at slow speed for another 30 mins to make sure they weren't turning around on us. I surface and run at standard for another 5 minutes when all of a sudden I have heavy flooding in the forward torpedo room with water running into the forward crew compartment. I send the Chief to go check it out as I race up the ladder to see what is going on topside as I think a crash dive would send us to the bottom due to the additional forward weight. What do I find? Absolutely nothing. No contacts, nothing in visual range (which was maybe 15 feet anyways), sounding confirms 50m under the kiel so I know we didn't hit land. We get the flooding stopped and I order a dive to 30m for a sound check that tells me what I already knew in that the closest hydrophone contacts were over 10km away. It's midnight and it's storming with heavy fog and 0 visibility (rules out planes), I was surfaced, I didn't hit land, nothing knew I was there let alone knew to attack me and I went from 100% to 30% hull integrity without as much as a warning. Did I hit a friggen mine?